


Bros with Benefits

by archea2



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Family Bonding, Fluff, Healing, Humor, I've taken some liberties with Vanya's power, Luther friendly, M/M, Post-Canon, Sibling Love, Step-Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-01-01 06:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18330581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: It's no-pocalypse time, baby! Klaus, Ben and Diego forge a new bond for better or... eh, not so bad, actually.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JangJaeYul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JangJaeYul/gifts).



> My first foray into a new canon, and of course I'm writing quasi-incestuous threesome fluff. Of course.

"Think of it as bros with benefits," Klaus says, the pencilled tilt of his eyes more fetching than it has any call to be. "The Greek hoplites did it 24/7. Ditto the samurais."  
  
"Klaus, you're not -'  
  
'Thinking straight. Perish the thought! Also, Ben's in."  
  
"Ben is not attracted to me."  
  
"I'll take him in over Cthulhu any day," Ben says.  
  
"If - _if_ I get on board with this... insanity, what will the others say?"

This, mind you, from Diego the Lone Gaucho. Klaus feels a warm jolt in his chest, stronger than any paddles, and a corresponding poke in his ribs.  
  
"Tell him he'll be setting a good example for Luther", Ben says, straight-faced.  
  
(They've tried everything to soothe Luther into self-esteem and, in Allison's case, out of his turtleneck. Five now speaks of sending them on a duo mission to Woodstock, Summer of Love '69, to fix the historical traffic jams. Vanya says "Sunstroke", but has been outvoted.)  
  
"Ben is crying because you don't find him pretty."  
  
"He's pretty awesome," Diego says, his brain too late for his curving tongue.  
  
Klaus giggles when his hand leaves a luminescent caress down Diego's cheek. "He is. He blushes blue."  
  
"Klaus..."  
  
"I'm clean," Klaus says quickly. "Your body is your temple, I know, but I - we - would only profane it with pure-distilled awe. And lube." A pause. "Bet I can ring Dad up while we're in the act."  
  
"Sold," Diego says, and feels a kiss on each cheek.


	2. Chapter 2

They take it slow, slowest, slower than Klaus ever was on a dope day, which is saying much. Not just the sex (Ben  can still only manifest in fits and starts), but, say, their living quarters (sorry again, Ben). It’s not that Diego is enamoured of his boiler loft, but having his own place was a major stone in his built-up fuck you to Dad and the Academy. Diego has made his peace with the Academy - heck, Diego has made his peace with _Luther,_  one giant leap for mankind - but is queasy about homecoming.

“It’s reverse empty nest syndrome”, Klaus complains to Vanya, who had no such compunction. Luther and Allison both insisted that she take their old room in lieu of the cubicle that was part of Dad’s Cinderella grooming for her, an offer that had every other Hargreeves look up expectantly, though they were only speaking in penitent synch.

(Vanya settled for Ben’s room. Ben said he didn’t need one. No one pricked an ear or batted an eye.)

“He’ll come round,” Vanya promises, crunching her Fruit Loops, Five’s order. Five’s fix-it plan for Vanya took the form of a long-ass equation, bristling with _?_ and _!_ Apparently, it includes pop art cereals, hug hours, a cat (a cat?), the cat’s degree of purring, and listening to Klaus. That’s what he says.

“He may,” Ben says, materializing a hand to snaffle a loop, “if Klaus stops pestering him.”

"I'm not _pestering_ ," Klaus says, because semantics are important. "I'm _proferring_."

"Give it time," Vanya says, a little wistfully, and Ben's hand covers hers before it vanishes again into thin air. "He knows you've got his back now, Klaus."

" _Don't_ ," Ben says, before the twinkle in Klaus's eye can make it to his mouth.

 

* * *

 

Diego shows up four nights later with a knife case under his arm, a duffel under his other arm, and a sheepish glare.

"Fatted calf, anyone?" Klaus calls out, even as his eyes are filling up. Ben doesn't say a word, only looks at Klaus until Klaus is fairly fuming with concentration and Ben can place his arms round Diego's neck. He's half worried that Diego won't find him warm enough, but Diego only makes a little noise in his throat and touches his scarred temple to Ben's. 

"I'm keeping my place," he warns later. They're pretzeled together in the dark, on Klaus's bed, an easy enough arrangement while Klaus is in his stick-figure phase and Diego's curving skills intact. Ben hovers around, in-between, _in_ them. "I need - I can't give it all up in a go, Klaus."

"It's okay," Klaus whispers back. "Ben and I - we're not going anywhere, bro."

"Yeah," Ben says, trusting Klaus to translate. "Tunnels, lights - vastly overrated."

Diego smiles a little, and is still smiling when sleep takes over the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tags are branching out because the bros also need a little one-on-one quality time.

Klaus sleeps unfashionably late. While the space-time continuum was generally all right with Five giving it a mere flick of his nail, Klaus’s body is not. It’s struggling with a now-clean, then-not Schrödinger time paradox, to which Klaus remedies with shameless siestas and even more shameless proposals.

“Why me?” Diego asks Ben quietly, marvelling at Ben’s _hereness._  There is more of Ben at dawn: sleeping within Klaus will do that now, Diego understands. Will give Ben the weight and closeness, the warm condensation of another presence under the sheets, and Diego fights with the new thirsty joy in him that would pull Ben in close and wrap their bodies into one.

He doesn’t, because there is more of Diego, too, under the sheets, and he’s still not sure that’s what Ben wants. Echoes, parallels. _If I see a boner, I’m out._

Ben closes the closeness all the same, pushing himself up against him, thus pushing Diego’s back against Klaus’s chest.

“I’m not the interloper? I’m not taking him from you?” It’s what Diego dealt with, night in, night out. People taking, people violating.

“You?” Ben’s lips, Ben’s miraculous mouth, kiss his cheek again. “You’re the caretaker.”

“That’s one word for it, Al would say.”

"Screw Al," Ben says. "Diego - I've had to die so many times, being with him. Not just the ODs. Not just him fucking up his life span every chance he got. Not even having to stand by and watch those bastards bleed him for hours, for _hours_ -"  And Diego envelops the warm weight tighter, feeling his own anger double in retrospect. "But, Diego, the worst? Was how he punished himself by making it sure all of you would give up on him."

"We never did."

"None of you stopped loving him. But the others - after a while, they took a step back. Understandably. I mean, the babbling, the constant feints and promises, it was hard on them too. And the small things. Stealing Patrick's wallet at Allison's wedding."

"Oh god," Diego says, remembering. He chuckles, careful to keep his voice low. "It had their honeymoon tickets in it, too."

The truant at his back mumbles a snore.

"But you found it - him - first. You found him so many times, Diego. You went and found him after Dave."

"You're not..." _Jealous_  feels a second-hand word. "You're okay with sharing him?"

Ben works their mouths together, hard, and it's more than Diego ever knew. Then Ben opens his and makes an exasperated sound with the back of his throat, and the sound vibrates against Diego's tongue; eddies down his chest; kick-starts Diego's heart. And cock, but Diego scarcely gives it a thought. He starved himself so often and so long after Patch, it's almost a matter of fact to neglect one rush of blood for another, for the thrill of Ben's give and push of muscles, human all over, and the once-forgotten scent of Ben, swirling Diego's head. 

"I left," he tells Ben. "when that fucker made a statue of you to _inspire us to try harder_."

"I know," Ben says, kissing him. "Diego, this is not about sharing. Man, you're so, so alive, you have no idea. You have so much zip _._  Even your anger, even your grief -"

"My failures."

"Yeah, no, they're alive. Know what's dead? Perfect Dad. Screw the fucker, _he_ failed. You didn't, that's why I fell for you."

It's dizzying, and Diego shuts his eyes against his heartbeat. The weight of Ben in his arms falters, and he opens them quickly. There is morning light in the room, glanced off Klaus's teenaged psychedelic posters. There is a pink flamingo staring at him, and Ben is fading in the light. Diego opens his arms on instinct, for something strong and pure to wash through him and still there; the shock of it cold at first, but livening up, like a secretive second pulse. 

Diego gives himself a long minute to host Ben, then turns over. Props himself on his elbow and tugs at the scruffy mop.

"Hey," he tells Klaus when the other's eyes open, half glazed with - thankfully - sleep. "Rise and shine, bro."


	4. Chapter 4

To Ben, time is not the abstract portal that it is to Five. More like a disco ball, flashing beams of light when he manifests and leaving him in a neutral chiaroscuro of not-being when he doesn’t, though the pauses are shorter and more spaced out these days.

It used to be the same for Klaus. Somehow, in the near past, Klaus’s destructive lifestyle gave him an empathy with Ben’s death that made Ben ache, but brought them closer than they’d ever been in Ben’s life. Klaus embraced him - in the abstract, first, smiling to him with childlike, naked relief after a bad trip or a too-quick lay.  

Then Ben’s fist touched his face, they touched palms, and in their darkest recent hour, they touched _cores_. Something changed that night.

(Night of the living dead, Ben thinks wryly. Sir Reginald’s regimen for him had included night marathons of horror flicks and decidedly child-unfriendly nature programs. Still, the joke’s on Reggie. Klaus doesn’t know it yet; neither, Ben thinks, does Reggie. But he does, and is content to wait and let Klaus and Diego exult in each other meanwhile, and in every resurfacing of Ben's.)

Helping him to an incarnate state still takes its toll on Klaus, though, and Ben sometimes slips back to nil voluntarily to give him his rest. The year rotates quicker when he does, and it’s a surprise when he opens his eyes another night to Vanya and Allison hanging fairy lights in the main _salon_. Grace, when operational, had stocked up on them during Klaus's and Allison’s enthusiastic twinkle phase.

“Are we having a party, then?”

They’re all used to his disembodied voice by now. Allison laughs and wriggles her fingers in his direction, but it’s Five who answers from the kitchen, “First of October, and I’m drawing the line at balloons.”

“But not balloon glasses,” Klaus says cattily, adding “Meowwr” for Bartok, the latest addition to the family, sitting in majestic fixity on the table.

(Bartok, Five’s order for Vanya, is doubling as a transitional object for Five. Ben read about these back when he was a real bookworm boy. Five has been doing his Fively best to belong, but it’s everyone’s consensus that he will benefit from an interim step between a wax mannequin and the six of them, and Bartok is glad to share his purring sessions.)

“Not when making sure this timeline’s gin doesn’t suck,” Five answers Bartok. “Someone has to, that isn’t Klaus.”

“Moi? My gin-gin days are over,” Klaus says hastily, letting his gaze ricochet from Ben to Diego, as he sets a plate before the latter. Ben is pretty sure the pie on it came from a box, but it’s been warmed, it’s been cut in four, and therefore it speaks volumes to Klaus channeling his pinker, gentler self to fill the Grace-shaped hole in Diego’s chest.

“Five, you up for a slice, or will it interfere with  your liquid lunch?”

“As long as you don’t dress up in anything 1955,” Five riposts, then pinches his lips at Klaus’s reproachful glare. “Sorry, Diego.”

Diego waves 1955 away. “None taken. Oh, Christ. Who died and made Luther king of the gramophone?”

“Maybe he’s dancing with Allison,” Ben says hopefully.

Five shimmers into thin air; shimmers back. “Nope. Vanya.”

Half of the room groans aloud. Luther’s penance, like everything Luther, is proving a not-half-measure that’s getting a bit much.  

“Let’s gin him up,” Klaus says, and blows a kiss to Ben, while his fingertips do the quick same to Diego’s cropped nape.

 

* * *

 

Luther ends up dancing with Allison’s boa.  A small step for man, but there you are.

Klaus dances with everything and everyone at hand, not forgetting Bartok. They’ve all got accustomed to his whirligig style, despite a tipsy Five’s attempt to turn it into a decent jitterbug. (Apparently, their little assassin clocked up more downtime between missions than the Commission ever suspected.)

Ben takes advantage of the glitter ball to glow on and off, clapped and cherished when visible, still loved _in absentia_. His blue aura sets off Diego’s capers, Diego’s effortless pirouettes, that have Klaus hoot wildly, his “You go, ba… You go, b-boy!” drowned in the girls’ laughter. Then Allison grabs the boa and does a graceful handkerchief dance with Vanya; and then Diego catches Luther’s hand on his right, Klaus’s hand on his left, and Ben has reloaded enough to do the same with Five and steer the boys into something half way between a many-legged capoeira and the Lobster Quadrille.

They dance together for hours, a paean to their _esprit de corps_ , and when Ben slips back into corporeality, he is between Klaus and Diego, as he was on their first night, and the night Five saved them, and the dream-blue night is streaming through the window to answer the fairy lights and the chimney’s fireglow.

There are only the three of them now.

“Come on,” Diego whispers, and it is Ben’s hands who turn and twist him, one black piece of clothes falling to the ground after the next.

 

* * *

 

"Look," Diego says eight hours later.

His mouth feels bruised, more than it ever did around a gumshield. It only makes him more eager to speak.

"We've come clean -" (a grin at Klaus's V-sign). "We've been honest about far more among ourselves. And I know you two want to ease me into this, but I'm not one to dodge a plunge." He pauses; bites his lip, where it has been made tender by their mouths. They are looking at him, half unsure, half certain - if only because they have the advantage of a total lack of hangover - and Diego has never felt more of a leader.

"I say we do this. We tell the other four about us."

"Three," Ben's voice edits at his ear.

"Three?"

"Three. I'm pretty sure Vanya got a blow-by-blow account at breakfast."

  
"Liar, liar, pants on fire," Klaus says, his moue huffy. " _Blow_ is nowhere near accurate - yet."


	5. Chapter 5

“Hey, sis,” Diego says, a self-conscious intruder. “Mind if I come in?”

Inside her room, a smiling Allison hums him in. Screw quantum teleportation, Diego thinks. You’d think the kind - and logic - gesture here would have been to de-age them the exact number of days they leapfrogged along with Five. Reverse the clock in Allison’s body just long enough to make her resonant again. But they came out of the leap as they were, warts and all, or, in Allison’s case, wound and all.

She is healed enough that she can make sounds, but it’s gonna be a while before her lips will part again, and never did Diego miss her smart, jaunty, self-assured voice so much. Even if there's one silver, judge-approved lining to its loss.

As if reading his mind, she holds up her left hand; curves her thumb and finger into the C that means _Claire_.

“Next week,” Diego promises. “Drive you to the airport myself.”

A quick undulation of her wrist, followed by a stern shake of head

“Yeah, yeah, no knives. Not even a toothpick on my person.”

Allison smiles, which is when he spots the coloured pencils scattered on her bed and the pile of posters laid against her bended knees. She holds one up for inspection, and he recognizes the toddlers on it. Little Miss Disarm with her arm outstretched, only she’s holding  it for a family of birds, roped to one another, to ansel down it. The one he picks is the Gouge kid, who still frames the other boy’s face between his palms, only there’s a friggin’ blue-coloured heart under their crossed arms, and the caption now reads **glomp**.

“About that,” Diego says, and feels his gaze tiptoe up to an inch above Allison’s head. “Klaus and I - that is, I and Klaus and - uh -”

Allison nods; smiles; drops the poster and gropes for her notebook.

THE BABY MONIKER SORT OF GAVE IT AWAY

“Yeah?” Diego asks, two-thirds relieved. “Good. Because this is the craziest shit I’ve done yet, and I need to know my blood-sister's got my back. As I have hers.” He looks at her and she looks at him, shrewd in their mutual understanding. “So that any time those two -”.

TWO???

“Oh.” He can feel the blood creep up his cheeks. “Yeah, Ben’s in it, too. It’s - complicated. You know. But it’s - I don’t know, it’s very simple, too. Like Japanese bondage, if I am to trust Klaus. Completely fucked up to the beholder’s eye, but it works. Sis, it really works.”

She give him a faux-shocked tap with the notebook, before she retrieves it.

LOVE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Yeah, she played Juliet in that CyberShakespeare flick. Got an Oscar for it too. Diego never saw the flick. He’d held it against her, then - grudged her the hype, the public eye, the trail of  _oohs_ and _aaahs_ blazing in her wake. Perhaps...

SO TAKE IT AND KEEP IT SAFE

JUST AS YOU KEEP US SAFE

EVERY DAY

I HAVE YOUR BACK

YOU HAVE MY VOTE

TO SAY NOTHING OF MY -  but her eyes are too bright for her grin - ETERNAL JEALOUSY

“Hey,” he says, even as he touches the long crinkled hair, which she's slowly weaning from its past blond sheen. He’s not quite sure how to comfort her - Luther always got there first, in her skirt-and-longstocking days.

“Tell you what, sis. I’ll stage a Special Op. Have my guys kidnap yours, and read him the Miranda. No, wait. Kidnap the big guy and have Klaus read him _Flowers in an Attic_ until he gives in. With all of the Klaus gusto. And he'll do the voices, too.”

Her grin catches up, dimpled and bright, and Diego thinks, Five was right. The past… the past can’t be erased. But it can be written upon. Drawn upon - yeah, Dad, even your colour-by-number past.

He is still holding the picture of the two kids and the blue heart-shape between them.


	6. Chapter 6

“Number One sat in his parlour,” Klaus says gaily, ”eating bread and honey. Hey, big guy. Left any for little me?”

Luther does not answer at once, because Luther is currently engaged in helping a wasp out of his honey, using a teaspoon and a hefty dose of Luther-brand patience. Klaus watches, entranced. There’s a gentleness to Luther’s hands, ungainly as they are, that says why Klaus will tease Luther with nursery song royalty but shun the King Kong quips - why a former Klaus had no compunction about nicking Dad’s _fin de siècle_ knick-knacks, but never laid a fingertip on Luther’s vinyles.

“Hey, Klaus. Hungry? I can heat up some -”

“No, oh no, no, no. No, I only come bearing a revelation.” Luther’s face takes on a familiar glaze, nine parts _shit_ to one part _what?_ , and Klaus quickly edits, “Not the fish fractals, not  this time. Still clean. And fractals are so yesterday, as I’m sure Five would agree.”

“...Yeah?” Luther says, and then, because Klaus feels as jittery as in the good ol’ three weeks ago, which is seriously unfair, “Klaus, are you all right? You’d better sit down.”

“I’m fine,” Klaus says. “Just a dab of stage fright. So. Here goes nothing.” He perches his long figure on the arm of the couch and breathes in, slowly does it, the way Ben taught him at fourteen when Klaus’s heart was in his throat, a pang, a panick. “I’m in love with Diego.”

“You - sorry, what?”

“And Ben. They’re the we of me,” Klaus says, making his point clear. “Ben’s in love with Diego too. And Diego, well, Diego’s banging us. Which is all cool beans, really, tomayto-mahto, anything goes, to quote dear old Cole, goose, gander, six of one and whatever of the other. There! I’m glad I told you.”

“Klaus -”

“ _What?_ ” Klaus erupts. It’s painfully clear to him how much he needs Luther’s... not approval, because Klaus never gave a gnat’s shit what anyone thought of his broken and punctured love life. But he wants… he wants Luther to keep liking him. Luther once trusted Klaus with his own vulnerable self; angled his head as far as his behemoth shoulders let him, and  let it rest on Klaus along with the child that was never quite engulfed in the man. With the touch came an obligation that kindled something new in Klaus, that neither Dave, a war comrade, nor Ben, still intangible then, had taught him. It was, perhaps, the first step on the road that led to today’s confession. Now Klaus wants, if not another Hulk-hug, at least a smile and a _go you_.

“Is he good to you?”

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Klaus parries, but it takes more than a coy quip to decoy Luther on a protective roll.

“Diego - does he care for you?”

“No, he beats me every night with that terrible, no-good, faux rubber bowling shoe, while Ben looks on. Of course he cares!”

“It’s just... “ And, God help them all, Luther is pinkening. “It can’t have been easy for him, not seeing Patch ever again. And yeah, I get it, that he wanted to wipe this timeline's slate and keep away for her sake. But... I could see, how he ached. And he may not realize it, but if he’s using you - and Ben - as some, er, stopgap -”

“Is that what you straight kids call it these days?”

Luther throws in the towel. That is, the spoon. “Klaus, you deserve to get as good as you give. That’s all. All I have to say.”

“I get it,” Klaus says, because Luther himself deserves not to be teased beyond human (or near-human) endurance. “And so does Ben. We’re all good, brother. No, really. Trouple in paradise.”

“...Okay, then.” And his brother grabs another chunk of bread.

They snack side to side on the old couch, while Klaus, high on relief,  ponders lessons and parallels. When Luther rises to water his plants - plural, because Luther is their honorary green thumb, a champion of all gardeners' right to live against apocalyptic odds, and after they all pitched in to buy him a potted aspidistra there was no stopping him -, Klaus says: “By the way, Diego’s telling Allison. Unless you’d rather?”

“No, I… no. Why would you ask? Why me?”

And now Luther is rose-reddening, while  Klaus’s left hand tattoo secretly highfives his right.

“Oh, no reason, no reason at all. Except...” And his gaze coaxes Luther’s, until they are both looking at Daddy’s old crest, left high and dry on the parlour chimney’s mantel. Ut malum pluvia. Mischief never rains...  "It _might_ be fun, just this once, to prove him right.”

 

* * *

 

Five is not in his room.

Nor is he to be found in the kitchen, the main parlour, the secondary parlour, the attic, or Pogo’s pantry, where Pogo has islanded himself, a self-deposed regent, until it’s safe for Vanya to lay eyes on him without a full-bodied shudder.

“Um, no, not since lunch,” Vanya says, standing with Luther at the foot of the stairs.  “He took Bartok with him, so I don’t think he went out. Why?”

Luther’s mouth opens, only to shut on second thoughts. Mischief managed for Klaus, then. Ben flashes him an apologetic grin under his hood..

“It’s okay” he tells Vanya. “I think I know exactly where he is.”

And then, eager not to rival her, he glows out. Watches her touch the banister with the tips of her fingers, as if to forgive it. Her other hand in Luther’s, she remains still, but her own light fuses up and along the banister railings, and a trail of tiny leaves, pale green folds and dark green clusters, appears in its wake.

(When she held Ben’s hand yesterday, all of two minutes, the floor shook beneath them, sinuous cracks winding between the black tiles and the white… and then filling up with a gold that sealed the arabesque cracks, not hiding, but healing them, in the manner of a Japanese ceramic.

Ben thinks of crazed minds and broken speech, and the early morning sunshine over Klaus's bed, fountaining across two live bodies, as he climbs the stairs.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry, the coming-out chapter is spilling over, as the fic tries to weave a back and forth between the trio's progress and the siblings' collective, if Platonic, effort to heal the past.
> 
> All my thanks to the kind readers who kudosed this so far. Kudos and comments are the best accelerants - worthy of Five himself!)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the hiatus, guys! RL was a bit of a bustle - but here we go again. As always, kudos and comments are treasured and answered!

The decision to lock up Sir Reginald’s bedroom was a consensus.

Quid pro quo, Five said. Shut the old man in, be it posthumously; give him a sip of his padded cell medicine. And so they retrieved some of his things -  books, papers - Luther’s moon stuff, which Klaus insisted _must_ see the light, even if Luther was of a mind to damn them to obscurity. Once done, they all filed out; shut the door; turned the key, and then Luther closed his own fist on the key and made it a misshapen lump of metal. Only Allison was brave enough to look into his face as he did, but the gesture came without a second’s second thought. 

There’s much good that a closed door will do.

There’s not much it can oppose to Five’s power, though - meaning that Five, true to self, has struck two birds with his Door Therapy. It contains Reginald’s shade all right; but it also provides Five with a space where none of his siblings, however persistent, will find him when he craves solitude. Which Five still does, at intervals. Much as he loves his family, their bustle and bickers (and the odd housequake) can be a match for Walmart on a Black Friday, and Five is still a novice at peacekeeping .

Thus, Ben totally gets Five cashing in on his ability to bypass a locked door.

An ability which Ben, incidentally, happens to share.

He does knock on the door before he walks through it, because young Ben might have made a point of taking a book to mealtimes, leaving the louder rebellion to Five and Diego, but ghost Ben has some manners, if you please.

“Oh, it’s you.” But there’s only a dash of dismissiveness to Five’s voice. “Do me a favour? Tell him it’s half and half. It is, but he won’t believe me, and he keeps fucking _staring_.”

“It’s mocaccino,” Ben tells Bartok, lowering himself to a cross-legged position. Bartok doesn’t blink. “We can’t wean him off the travel mug yet, so we’re putting his sweet tooth to good use.”

A beat. Carefully, with slow-mo determination, Bartok unfolds his tail and curves the end of it.

“ _Yes_ ,”  Five says over his shoulder. He’s trying to hang back Dad’s atrocious bedside picture of a squatting orangutan and, as far as Ben can see, arrogantly failing. “Seven hours a night, more beddy-bye than Dolores ever talked me into. And she was a regal starer, pal.”

Bartok, satisfied, blinks.

“Wish I’d met her,” Ben says from his position. He knows better than to offer a chair or a hand.

“Wish you had,” Five answers - untypically, but then, typical Five is less easy to pinpoint, now the Apocalypse Take Two is off the table. He’s still short of his next growth spurt, scheduled for his fifteenth year, still his tar-and-feathers, marshmallow-and-margarita self - one minute the voice of reason, a walking hissy fit the next. But… he’s trying for stable. And open. Well, ajar. “She’d have approved, by the way.”

“She…?”

“Your threesome,” Five says, letting the orangutan crash to the floor. He sighs, a wistful fresh face. “She was all for watching if I got some whoopie on my hookie time. We tried it, once. 1961. She, me, guy name of Leonard Kleinrock - wouldn’t ring a bell _now_ , but the Commission thought it would be a bad, bad idea to let him publicize his views on the galactic network. Two is a crowd, all that. So they gave me _carte blanche_ to distract him. And we gave him - well. Let’s just say he learnt to unload quite different packets then.”

“Right,” Ben says hastily. Arrested physical development sucks, tell him about it, but there’s only so much whoopie talk he can take from that nice young mouth.  “I wouldn’t call it a parallel, but - kudos, I guess? And thanks. Mr. Empathy.”

He flashes his own smirk Five’s way, as he did when they were kids and Five fire-strafed him with every equation he could think of, only for scholarly Ben to fire back Lewis Carroll quizzes. (Dad blew his top after the seventh green-eyed kitten and decreed their meals silent.)

“Please. A mere two and two.”

But Ben, again, knows better. Knows that Five knew, and understood - better than any of them -  Diego’s choice to let go of Patch. Understood, too, Klaus’s realization that here, in this timeline, his tale of love and survival had shrunk to a narrative blank. Knew, and approved, of Ben’s fierce devotion to both, as beyond the pale of _do_ and _don’t_ as his heroism (or Five’s, for that matter) ever was.

“A mere Two and Four,” he says, because Ben is not always a saint. Five, the algebrainiac, scowls up at him, and Ben laughs, because some things never change.

“What were you doing here, anyway? This room is turning into a regular dust trap.”

“Looking for this,” Five says, and lo and behold, the orangutan’s frame has come apart, and Five’s victory grin has stretched on to his ears as he holds up a sheaf of typewritten paper. “So old boyish of Dad. I'd have carved out a niche in the bedboard.”

Ben leaps to his feet, his curiosity only a step ahead of his hope that Klaus will keep him long enough in his thoughts for Ben to peruse the thing. He does - Klaus’s mind is tidy enough, by now, that it can store Ben, Diego and mocaccino with minimum havoc - and stops at the first acronym.

“Whoa. Dad had a deal with the CIA?”

“The fucking CIA,” Five edits gleefully. “And yeah, he did. What, you thought he pulled all these missions out of his - trilby? It’s here, chapter and verse. And what we do with it is entirely up to us.”


	8. Chapter 8

Two hours later.

“So let me recap,” Luther says through the _clinkety-clank_ of Diego’s knives, clattering together on the coffee table where Diego laid them down lovingly, prior to a good scrubbing with Mom’s home-made polish. Their current, clinkety state is due to Vanya having a bear of a headache, courtesy of Five’s briefing. She is nestled between Allison’s shoulder and Bartok’s purring weight, cosily enough, but the coffee table is still having intermittent tremors.

“Tell it like I’m five,” Klaus says.

“When aren’t you,” Luther mutters. But his tone is fond, his speech simple, mercifully devoid of Five’s rhetorical leaps and gambols. Klaus listens one-earedly, pondering if Luther should take up poetry again. He does have that knack for pausing every five or six words, making it the easiest thing to slap a few rhymes to his spin, and…

 

_So dear old Dad, he had the gall_

_To barter with the CIA._

_They let him cradle-snatch us all,_

_And mess us up from our b-day._

_Got impunity for his sprogs,_

_Adoption papers a-plenty!_

_“Evil is raining cats and dogs!”_

_(He said). “My super nursery_

_Will hail your every beck and call,_

_If you sign here - in blood, I pray -_

_And desist from holding in thrall_

_My little freaklings. Roswell? Nay._

_Guantanamo? Pish! Much better_

_To sic them on every hoodlum,_

_Good sirs, and use them to deter_

_Crime. Just point me to any bedlam..._

_Dangerous? Why, yes. P.S. :_

_However hard-worked my brood,_

Do _gag those pesky child services._

_Childhood? What childhood?_

_So_ passé _, childhood - the future,_

_Now we’re talking! Speaking of,_

_Should any tiny-tot trooper_

_Bite the big one - cough, cough -_

_No biggie. I’ll tweak the myth,_

_Have the comics tone it down..._

 

“They had me wed a Venusian!” Ben interrupts, for Klaus’s other ear only. Klaus needs a nap before he can manifest his love again, more’s the pity, because his love is sporting an A1 bitchface.

“Shhh,” Klaus says, as Diego calls for more baking soda, and Luther turns to the last page. “It’s sonnet time, baby.”

Allison frowns her _what?_

 

_Comics, yes. To sweeten the pot,_

_I hereby grant you, in this letter, a_

_Half of all royalties (that’s a lot)_

_Including merch sales, etcetera,_

 

_My feisty pop starlets will reap._

_They won’t need it. I shall cover_

_All their costs, dear little sheep._

_Think of it! A golden kidpower_

 

_For you. For me? Intel, gents,_

_For foresight is twenty twenty._

_Keep me in the loop of events,_

_World-wide. Plus: if, in many_

 

 _Years to come,_ I _came to die…_

 

Ah, the concetto. Klaus leans forward on his elbows. Bring it on, daddy!

 

_The deal stays on. Merci you. Bye!_

 

The room drops into silence. Well, more silence. Luther stares at the papers in his hand, obviously nonplussed.

“I don’t get it.”

“You would, if you’d listened to me in the first place,” Five says. “But no, you bunch have the wit of a paramecium when it comes to…”

Vanya’s lap meeps. Loudly.

“Not you, Bartok. All right, all right. Look, it’s easy enough to parse. Dad went full-on Faustus on these guys. Got himself free rein and us impunity - what? Do you really think those thirty-six had it any cooler? How come the press never got hold of _them_? - by leasing us out and keeping the CIA in pin money. It was a profitable deal when he lived. And he made sure it would remain profitable when he died.”

“What profit?” Klaus asks. “He, he’d be dead and gone. They couldn’t very well forward the intel to Satanville, could they?”

“Are you this -” Five says, and then he catches his bangs, tugs on them, hard, as if intent to raise himself up in the air by sheer hairpower, and turns to face the one empty corner. “You’re right. Unbelievable. He still hasn’t got it.”

“Don’t tell him I’m behind the couch,” Ben tells Klaus.

Allison, whose pen has been zooming over her pad, now raises the latter.

SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH THIS?

ENSURE IMPUNITY?

REFORM THE ACADEMY?

SUE THEIR CIASS OFF?

“Harsh, but true. Finally, a grown-up voice,” Five says, then winces a little. “Sorry, Allison...”

NONE TAKEN, KID

“... But yeah. Whatever Dad had in mind, this is tangible proof that the Great American Firewall aided and abetted his shitty parenting, while pocketing our well-earned per diem. Not the kind of thing you’d want splashed up in the tabloids. At the very least, we can ensure further impunity. More, if we want.”

“More?”

“Vanya… you’re still on the road to recovery. But, at some point, you’re going to have to decide what to do with your power. We all are. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not ready to sail down the Egyptian river yet.”

“It’s not denial if you know it exists,” Luther says. “But, Five -  I’m done being a follower.”

“Then don’t be! Jesus, Luther! This is your golden ticket to agency - pun fucking intended. Don’t you see? These guys need us. Needed us enough, in the past, that they greenlit all of Dad’s demands. And I’m not saying what he did was right, or we should get ourselves a new leash. But, come on! We can’t stay cooped up here all our lives.”

“This is our house,” Luther says softly, and then a miracle happens: Luther crosses over to where Allison is still holding Vanya, and covers her hand with his. “I like that we’re changing it. I love to think that when Claire arrives, there’ll be nothing left of the old gloom. And I want it to be a home for all of you, as long as you need one. But as long as none of you is in danger... I’m done with the missions. I need to be my own man, Five, not Our Man in the Academy.”

“Fair enough,” Five says. “I, for one, know who I am. And I’ll be damned if you stick me in school or find me playdates in the nearest Scout patrol. I want to do what I’m good at, and that’s changing things.”

“The Commission…”

“The Commission thinks big. I won’t. And I won’t kill unless I absolutely have to. But this -” Five points to the papers - “is my second chance. I’ll put what I am on the table, and, trust me, they’ll want it. And if they did get hold of those thirty-six, I’ll want to know. If there’s one goddamn chance one of these powers can fix _me_ , I’ll want to know. If there isn’t, well. I can still be a fixer. Vanya?”

“I think - I’ll want redemption,” Vanya says. She turns to Allison. “I know you want me to go public again, with the music. Want to take a step back and hand over the limelight. And I love you for it. But... it’s lonely, too, being a concertist. It stands you apart.”

‘Doesn’t have to be either or,” Diego butts in, a la Diego. “Take me…”

“No,” Klaus says, suddenly alarmed. “No, hell no, they’re not taking you.”

But Diego’s brain, like Diego’s skill, has already spun him to the next twist and turn. “Once a vigilante...”

“Diego, no! Not again!”

“I throw knives, baby.” When Diego looks at him, there’s a tide in the beautiful dark eyes, rising hard and fast. Klaus doesn’t like it one whit.  “It’s the one thing I’m good at. I really hate to say it, but put me in a ring with Luther and I’ll be atomized before the second bell.”

Luther looks aghast. “I don’t want to atomize you!”

“But not everyone is Luther. And then - you heard the deal. What Dad did, he did his own derring-do way. We’d still get that, right?”

Five nods. “He had the upper hand. We’d have - at the very least, the middle hand.”

Klaus stands up, shaking his head at Ben’s own hand, Ben’s open palm. “No. No, no, no, _no_ , we’re not doing this. I’m done losing my lovers to the oh-so-good fight.”

“But…”

“Listen. _Listen_ to me. I’m not going to stay home and knit you a balaclava while you tote up those broken skulls…”

“You were glad enough for those broken skulls when they were shooting at you a month ago!”

“That was then! This is now! What do we care if some policymakers want us on the field? They did, back in ‘65, and I had to watch him die. They did, when they sent Ben over to -”

“Don’t involve me,” Ben says, his face blazing ice blue. “I’m not siding with one out of two - that was never _our_ deal.”

“Oh, great, Ben’s in.” Klaus throws his arms up, startling Bartok into a leap. “I’m manifesting him just so he can go and get himself killed all over again, flashing his moobs at the wrong guy!”

“Will you stop with the woe parade!”

“So what are you telling me?” Suddenly, Diego's voice is muffled, that sub-macho strain, nine parts angst to one part glitch, that Klaus had vowed, with all his soul, never to hear again.  “That I can’t look out for Ben? Or you? That any partner I get, I get k-k-k-”

And then, just like that, Diego is out. Collects his arsenal, tucks each blade home, and stomps to the door. Klaus turns to Ben, expecting him to follow suit, but Ben only looks back mournfully. Bartok stares. Luther gapes. Allison frowns. The coffee table tips over.

“Yeah, that went well,” Five says.


	9. Chapter 9

The City throws itself at Diego, too many arms open.

Old friend, old foster-monster. It took Diego in at seventeen, when he thought he could flush that Dad’s Army crap down the can and start on his own. (He couldn’t. Quite. Still kept the family name, still used it as a by-word for prowess. Kept his knives, against every quip darted at him when a patrol car hobbled back on slashed tires; kept his cool when called Senorita Umbrella,  or handed a gun and told (time and again) to sissy up, until the day four of his alleged brethren (nope) in arms (please) cornered him at the close of their barathon and offered to frisk him with excessive gusto.)

The City looks truest at night, always did. He and Patch used to roam it, dusk in, dusk out. Nighthawks, the two of them. Not so much the bars, but the riverside -  the large streets, both sides dusted with corporate neon glitter - the cleaner little streets, dark but comely - and the roof above her flat, the one door he was allowed to picklock so they could lie together under their star patrons, Orion for him and the beautiful constant Polaris for her.

Even the gym, where he fought and glowed with every pore, the City’s growl in his back.

It’s where the final street drops him, once his car has burnt the midnight oil and Diego’s switched to walking it off - the betrayal. Klaus’s. His. Somewhere in the City, Patch is patrolling, alive but for him  (and Five, and Klaus - only he never held it against Klaus, did he? The way he’d held it against Dad, when Ben...). He misses her, and, missing her, he tries to ignite her loss for more anger fuel, but she feels serene and far tonight,  a focus of grief only in the abstract. When he looks into the night, all he sees is Klaus’s and Ben’s old haunts. Their City was never his, unless he broke and entered it, and then broke it a bit more to set it right.

But there’s a snail trail of graffiti on the Al’s façade and, just like that, he’s put in mind of Klaus’s room. Of Klaus scribbling at walls for hours, making them a mute sounding board for the crazy, the fever, the lonely, ultimately the fuck-you at the tallest, oldest wall in the house, the backbone of it, Dad’s very stony Dadness.

Did Klaus never get it, that Diego’s fight is Diego coping with not saving him? With not saving Ben? Or does Klaus only see the _not_ , miss the fury?

Who is Diego Hargreeves without the adrenaline of loss and love?

If it wasn’t so late, he could take it out on one of Al’s pet pounders. But the sky is already poised between dead of night and break of dawn. Time to go home, Diego tells himself - a hollow mantra -, and pushes the heavy gym door.

The place is empty. Dark on dark. Only the stiff shadows of corners, void, sandbags, still, ropes, rigid...

...and the bulkiest shadow of all, propped against a corner post of the ring.

“Oh, for _God’s_ sake.”

Luther raises a hand, complete with a flask.

“Red Bull,” he says with Luther’s customary flair for brevity. “Thought you’d want to rehydrate.”

A talk with Luther is about the last item on Diego’s bucket list, if only because Diego’s throat is presently a) lumpy, b) clicking, and c) very, very parched. Which must be the reason why he does a dive and roll onto the platform. Luther relinquishes the flask.

“So,” he tries again.

“We’re not talking”, Diego says, because he is much less thirsty and thus owes Luther a yellow card.

“Oh,” Luther says, and relapses into a half-minute silence. Then: “It’s okay. Ben’s guarding him, Vanya’s guarding the exits, and the cat has Fived itself down on his chest. He’s not doing anything stupid tonight.”

Diego nods, gazing into the shadows. “One down, one to go, huh?”

“Hey,” Luther says, and bumps their shoulders together. To Diego’s surprise, the bump is feathersoft, a tiny hello of Luther’s eternal coat to his own leather. “For what it’s worth, I think it could work.”

 _You do, do you, Number One?_ tickles Diego’s throat. But the rustle of Luther’s coat is still oddly calming, and, so is Luther’s sedate tone. Diego relaxes a bit more against the ropes.

“He’ll follow you through thick and thin,” Luther said. “And, you know, that war year of his - I don’t think you should underrate it. Try and meet him halfway? It doesn’t have to be the CIA, it doesn’t even have to be us. Just, whatever your fight is, don’t go and leave him behind. If you lead, don’t lead him into temptation.”

“You’re not...?” Diego asks; keeps the query half a tease. _You_ and _lead_ , such  an unexpected twosome from Luther. Who shifts a little self-consciously from his seated position, until Diego takes pity on him and finishes the sentence. “... reforming the Academy?”

“That band has sailed,” Luther says, and chuckles a little under his breath, before he grows serious again. “I’ll be there if you need me. Any of you. Any sign of danger, sign me up. But I’m sitting this one out.” And, as if to stretch his point, Luther extends his legs. “Allison needs me.”

 _Finally_ , Diego’s too-quick reflexes tell Diego, beating Diego’s guilt by a nose.

“And I need her,” Luther carries on, blithely oblivious to his inner turmoil. “Actually, you know, she’d be a fantastic Number One. Better than either of us.  Back then… with the lanes, and the violin… she had a twenty-twenty vision.”

The moon excepted, Diego thinks, but knows better than to speak the m-word. Not when Luther, finally, appears to be stripping off his sackcloth.

“She’s staying here? She's not going back to L. A.?”

“Oh, we’re both here to stay,” Luther says, and Diego marvels at the implausible _safe_ feeling that washes over him, like the gentlest of Vanya’s waves.

(When Vanya held his hand, all of Diego’s knifes fluttered up in the air. ~~He~~ Bartok mewed, but they only bobbed up and down, the daylight glancing off their blades in a silver ballet, before they dropped safely to the ground.)

“I’m thinking of making part of the hall an open space,” Luther muses aloud. “A florist’s space. Claire would like it, I think. We’ll have to work it out. I hope I can. I want to. They need me, Diego, and I need them. I want a life with them. You know?”

Diego sits up abruptly. “Big guy...”

“Yeah?” Luther asks, squinting in his direction.

“Shut up now. And - and take me home.”

He thinks he can spot a smile, which would equate a death warrant in any other circumstances. But, just tonight, he can give his brother the benefit of the dark.

(And if his hands squeeze Luther’s arms in the next quick second, that’s just so Diego can haul his cramped ass up.)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there, guys! One epilogue coming up...
> 
> This fic has officially made it to its tenth chapter and past its hundredth kudos. Thanks for your feedback - it makes all the difference.
> 
> (Also, there's sex in this chapter.)

He finds them in each other’s arms, as they do.

Ben's a slender-but-solid presence, duveting Klaus the best he can. A stab of wonder finds its way through the layers of regret and uneasiness, as Diego’s gaze takes in Ben’s naked back, Ben’s shoulders, rising and falling imperceptibly with every breath. It takes Diego’s away, to realize that Ben has lungs, active lungs now, when Klaus summons him to life. And Diego's low, marvelling _oh_ must have carried through, because Ben is stirring; is turning, in the loose grip of Klaus’s arms, as he raises himself on his left elbow. 

“Oh,” Diego says, startled out of awkwardness. His next steps end up with his knee up Klaus’s bed and his kiss to Ben’s cheek, Ben’s warm mouth, to his eyelids, _still reddened_ …

“Yeah,” Ben says, and his mouth makes a little sound, wet and joyful. “He’s - made a lot of progress, lately.”

Diego thinks of Ben growing on, his body still years behind, but catching up - but recording their times together, every scratch and shine of it, so it can testify to a life well lived. Until Klaus’s miraculous gift truly pays off, and Ben dies a new, aged-up death -  perhaps in Klaus’s arms, if God Herself is to be trusted.

He touches the puffed-up lids almost reverently.

“ _Not_ an incentive,” Ben warns him. “I’m not crying my eyes out over you, bucko, not when I finally have them back, and they’re itching like anything.”

The sheets rustle next to them. When Diego parts his cheek from Ben’s, Klaus is looking straight at him, his face a blank around his own red-rimmed eyes. Then Klaus struggles up, his long form doubling on itself so he can sit in bed, both hands in his lap, and move his gaze down to his naked palms. There’s a choice in the making, and Diego freezes.

Slowly, Klaus raises his chosen palm.

“Oh, oh baby,” Diego says, down a long  exhale, and bends his mouth to the palm. Gives each of the five letters a kiss, a suck of lips, wondering (not for the first time) how Klaus could stand the needle's fire against that vulnerable zone. He covers it with his own, before he speaks again.

“I fucked up, baby. I hurt you, and I’m - and I -” Soulful words, even clad in one syllable, aren’t Diego’s forte. Never were. His mind tries to picture the next best _I love you_.  “I’ll do better .”

“Me too,” Klaus whispers. “The very words.”

“Diego and Klaus in a tree,” Ben mocks tenderly, “T-A-L-K-I-N-G. That’ll be the day.”

“Speak for yourself! You never shut up, not one minute, while he was gone. And you -” Klaus scowls - “made sense. You always do. You _glitter_ with it. My brother, ladies and gentlemen: the Liberace of Sense.”

Ben groans, and Diego takes advantage of their tiff to flop down between them. He has a vague idea that he ought to peel off this holster first, but Ben is already back to blue and Klaus never seems to care how many pointy things he brings to bed.

“So,” he says. “Talking?”

“First things first,” Klaus says firmly. There’s some fumbling around the buckled region of Diego’s waist, followed by some French oath or other, and then... “This is getting  a popper button, like, presto.”

“You are _not_ putting poppers on me.”

“Better on than in,” Klaus says, and, once again, Diego’s heart contracts while something in him gives; opens up, like the buckle. “I’m taking you with me” spills over, rough-spoken, even as he spreads his thighs open. Ben’s immaterial hand is cradling his heart, cool and loving, and Diego turns to a very flustered Klaus. “Both of you. And it doesn't have to be every beck and call. We choose. Together.” The beat in his heart is deafening, as if Ben was boosting it, was making love to Diego’s very blood pulse, brimming over with - “And we share.”

Klaus’s hands are already stripping him bare: the secret, exposed Diego, the flesh beneath the steel. It’s okay. It’s okay, Diego tells himself, if he stutters through his way of the flesh.  He has two lookouts. And they’ll see to it that he’s good, that he’s safe and cared for. Least he can do…

He blocks Ben’s hand, solid again, on his chest and moves down instead - to where Ben is hard with tenderness. Moves his mouth to the strange fullness, and the new sensation with it, a layered whole (the musk, the thickness, the cry slipping out of Ben’s mouth when he fills Diego’s), swirls his head.

Just then, he hears a note across the wall.

It’s shy, a pale wisp of a sound, and he dismisses it. The heat in and around them grows, even as Diego takes his journey to the next terra incognita, and maneuvers himself up and astride Ben’s thighs, still clinging to Klaus. Klaus, the conduit between live Diego and not-so-dead Ben. Klaus, medium, matchmaker, messed-up, _mine_...

“You really don’t have to,” Ben is saying, glancing up wide-eyed, just as Klaus pleads, “Oh yeah, baby, whoop it up!”

“I do, actually,” Diego says. He is unprepared, something in him rejecting the indignity of fingers for the manly burn of the Real Thing. But he’s as ready as he’ll ever be. And willing, if slightly uneasy, to flip yesterday's climactic exit and gain their trust again. “Just, um.”

“Awe and lube. Got it. Got you, Diego.” And Ben is trembling, too; suddenly, Diego understands that they may be two for whom this is a first. He strokes his other palm up Ben’s hip, Ben’s side, before he pushes up on  his knees. Ben’s glistening cock, larger than his slight build led Diego to expect, strains in greeting, and the note strains along, rich and joyful.

 _Vanya_ , he thinks briefly, distracted from the pain of that first breaching, slow and careful as they are. It’s all right. It’s the cruel, impersonal prickle he hates, not the round, generous burn of connection. In the next room, a very oblivious Vanya stresses his point. Less shyly, she takes the note up, and then down, down, _down_ , a fountaining scale that makes it through the porous stones and envelops the three of them.

His lovers, too, hear it. Klaus starts saying something, but suddenly the sound is everywhere between them - is rocking them, sort of, so Diego can ease himself down to its accompaniment. The next thing he knows, he is tumbled forward into Klaus’s arms, and the pain changes; shifts, like the tune, to an electrifying scherzo. The waves of it crash all around them, fast-forward, thrust upon thrust, as Klaus’s lips peck all over Diego’s face, his moans covered by Ben’s panicked “Wait, guys, wait…”

“It’s the damn _Bumble-Bee_!” Klaus yells.

“It’s not just that!” Ben pants, but before he can say more, the pizzicati surge and soar again, and Diego answers their call, rocking himself into Ben’s groin until they’re both sitting up and Ben’s arms are about him - firm but gentle - a foil to the vigour of his hips and Klaus’s vocal urging. It’s a good thing that Vanya's playing so loud, with all of her recovered buoyancy: Diego (who once paused mid-assault to listen to her and marvel) would be glad, if he wasn’t too far gone - every nerve-end racked  - Ben too, deep-sunk in him, his breath hot and jerky against Diego’s ear... as they soar high... and higher... and...

They come as the music peaks, a long-held, ecstatic vibration that stops abruptly, causing all three to crash down on the bed, very ungraciously, and bump heads with one another and the wall, Klaus’s moan swerved to an "Ouch!". 

Across the wall, a puzzled voice calls, “... Guys?”

“We’re never telling her,” Ben mouthes, to Klaus’s pious nod. Diego allows himself one roll of eyes before they close again, due to the exhaustion of make-up sex. Or _make-up_ sex, as he finds out later, walking into the bathroom only to spot the double set of initials doodled on his chest with Klaus’s best kohl pencil.

(Klaus tells Allison instead. She laughs, a throaty, audible laugh, and offers her Dior Addict Lipstick against their one month anniversary.)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two for one! You get a double chapter epilogue, since it ended up with twice the usual word count.
> 
> Many thanks for those who followed this to the end, and special thanks to JangJaeYul.

“You,” Klaus chides, “are not meeting with the CIA in a hole-riddled top.” When Diego takes another step, he adds, “I have a darning needle, and I will… wave it about spookily!”

“These holes are for _ventilation._  It’s a sweaty life on the streets, baby."

“Whatever. You’re lucky I’m not patching them with lace.”

The air fizzes, before it ushers Five in. “Leaving in ten, g - oh. Nice pink thread, Klaus.”

Diego whips around; catches Five’s grin first. The grin seems to loiter in the air, Cheshire-wise, a split second after Five pops out.

 

* * *

 

The CIA office is a letdown. It is cramped, characterless, and the dude in it keeps rubbing menthol balm under his nose even though it’s October.

On the bright side, he is clearly terrified of their motley group and making no secret of it. Even Bartok, its fore- and hind legs hanging on each side of Vanya’s neck like a glorified stole, inspires a cautious tone.

“The cat has a power, too?”

“He grounds me,” Vanya says amiably. The dude swallows, and bartering turns out to be a piece of cake. Not that their individual quids pro quo are unreasonable. Five will jump anywhere they like, if given _carte blanche_ and black coffee. Not anywhen, though. That’s for him to decide. And he wants an open account with the dude’s tailor. After his prolonged stint in the mid-50es, Five can spot a bespoke double-breasted jacket fifty paces away.

Allison, in a lovely dusty pink mock neck, only smiles and hands over a list with Claire’s name at the top. Diego shakes his head. Luther’s quid takes everyone by surprise.

“Er,” the official says. “We can un-red that bit of tape, sure, but would that entail -”

“I don’t want to see her,” Luther breaks in. “That is, I don’t want _her_ to see _me._ But her name - yeah. I want my adoption made null and void, that’s all I ask.”

Suddenly, the room feels wintry. Its temperature has dropped to a chill, a sure sign that Vanya is upset, until Luther turns to her. “Though I plan to end up a Hargreeves,” he says, and when Allison’s smile grows warm and earnest, so does the air. The official sneezes, and Klaus says, oh well, if they’re talking paperwork, and manifests Ben next to the potted plant.

“The rumours of my death have been vastly exaggerated,” Ben says, having lived through scores of family meals with a little help from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  “A new birthyear, if you please.”

“Me, I’d _love_ a golden caviar facial,” Klaus adds before anyone can stop him, which is Diego’s clue to herd them all back to the family van - legally acquired, this time - and back to the house, where he drops five of them before dashing off to the airport.

* * *

 

The house looks extra-not-ordinary, but it’s a good _not._ The hall floor is shot with gold; the hall itself a riotocracy of leaves and petals. Black-eyed Susan vine hugs every column. There are new lamps, strong-soft, picking up the gold and Allison’s child-friendly edits of Dad’s old Stab, Dick, Stab pictures. The ottoman cushions are everywhere. The air smells of fluffernutter, mochaccino, Klaus’s shampoo, revival. Every animal trophy head sports a cardboard moustache and goatee, also courtesy of Klaus. Vanya’s violin is like a bamboo fountain.

This is the house where the mice have learnt to play, the cat being away.

“Wow!” Claire bursts into a jackpot of smiles. Only one is for the hall, though. “Mom, Spaceboy’s so nice and _wide_!”

Luther beams from the spontaneous, free gratis praise, and Klaus says “Live and learn, Daddy - oh, wait” under his breath.

“Yes he is,” Allison whispers,.

 

* * *

 

Their first foray is a three-quarters success. They track Target down to the place where he has killed one hostage and is keeping the other two as bargaining chips, and then Ben, having doffed the Dead Cloak of Invisibility, goes and ties the guy’s laces together. Some bickering ensues as to that being a slower, if surer, method of bringing him down, and while they bicker, Klaus manifests the dead hostage long enough that he can take leave of his wife and kid. He wishes he could do more, but he’s still new at this God business, and meanwhile there’s Diego’s ear, nipped in the lobe by Target’s stray bullet when he went down flat on his face.

“Ears bleed a lot,” Klaus informs him later, with the connoisseur’s airy tones, while patching him up. “Tried slapping a field dressing on a pal, back in ‘68, who had his blown away by a mortar shell. _Very_ messy. Ben, another ice cube?”

Ben opens Diego’s fridge. They’re using the boiler room as a multi-function job annexe - a triage station, strategy room, Diego’s arsenal, and, more often than not, a place where bros can relax and shag like bunnies undisturbed.

“And an egg.”

“Boiled,” Klaus says quickly. One egg-freshened kiss proved enough. “Comes with the territory, baby.”

 

* * *

 

Vanya’s first concert is a private thing. It’s going to be a while before she trusts herself with the general public again, so tonight’s gala is for the benefit of six listeners, a cat, and a parterre of green buds. But it’s a thing of beauty.

Even more so when Vanya bows herself offstage after the first half, and comes back with her arm slipped under Pogo’s. She is (safely) radiant; Pogo is subdued, but smiling. No one knows what words were traded in the wings. No one will ask.

Diego is lost in the beautiful curves of Schubert’s _Serenade,_  when a balloon skirt rustles in.

“Mind if I sit next to you, dear?”

“That’s Ben’s -” and Diego blinks alert to Ben’s empty chair, Ben himself settled on his other side and Klaus’s lap (it’s okay - it’s Luther sitting behind them), and Mom’s serene face.

She sits, distributing the folds of her dress around her, letting him shuffle closer. He may be crying a little, but that’s all right. Men, real men, have cried in response to beauty. He cannot speak, but he thinks, another evening, before the rain season, he’ll take her out for a ride in the open world, and at one point he’ll say, _Mom, there’s something I don’t want to keep from you._

 

* * *

 

Ben’s “Blue Period” (Klaus) comes to a natural end in November. Ben, to his own surprise, becomes manifest for long, longer, longest stretches of time. His body becomes host again - to the marks of experience. He gets bags under his eyes after a night’s vigil or a late waffle party. He gets, memorably, a cold. He gets to walk an entire 24 hours with a hickey right in the middle of his perfect forehead.

Klaus gets to sleep in the bathtub when night comes. Still, the hickey gives Ben an idea.

“Are you sure?” Diego asks, his smallest knife, the arsenal baby, between his fingers. “Ben, babe, you gotta be sure.”

“Just a scratch,” Ben reassures him. “Just - you know. As a show of evidence.”

His leather jacket lies next to him, his hoodie sleeve rolled up so he can offer Diego his left arm. For a moment, Diego feels a fever that’s not quite desire and not quite doubt. He can do anything with his blades, and if that includes making Ben happy, so be it. But it’s one thing to throw, and it’s another to actually take the blade to this solid, palpable presence, still warm from their embrace. His fingers shake, until Klaus covers them with his hand to guide them. Lightly, vicariously, they touch the smooth plane of Ben’s forearm. And when the blade glides away, they leave a thin red line behind it, barely welling up.

“Oh god, oh _god_ ,” Ben says, shaken in turn. It’s the beauty shtick all over again.

Klaus looks like he’s about to push up his own sleeve and promote a blood oath, only to think better of it. It is, after all, Ben’s hour. It should be all about Ben. And so they stay and look, look at the beautiful red line on Ben’s arm until it has coalesced into less than a scar, and Mom is calling them for dinner.

(And if one of them kisses the small knife, that’s strictly between him and the blade.)


	12. Chapter 12

Luther marries Allison at the first fall of snow. The yard is dusted with white, and the low-angled light of winter makes it a glittering white. They stand where they once shed their father’s ashes, and bask in the light.

Klaus cries with abandon throughout the rite, his back patted in turn by Diego, Ben, Vanya, and the bridegroom. He does remember to pause when it’s Allison’s turn to speak.

“...to love, cherish, and never ever rumor you,” she whispers, to which Luther immediately objects that wait, you never know, what if they’re in a death or life situation where he, Luther, needs to  do - or _not_ do - something, the latter especially? Then he’s perfectly all right with being rumored. In fact, it would be the ethical thing to rumor him. You know. Hypothetically.

“Oh, for fff...Fitzgerald’s sake,” Five says, clutching Bartok like a portable heating pad. “Just hand over the rings, Claire de Lune. They can sort out the ethicalities when we’re inside.”

“I've always wanted grandchildren,” Mom can be heard telling Diego dreamily. “Dear little babies, just like all of you must have been. Do you think Ben could be persuaded -”

The priest fairly jogs them to _husband and wife_ , and the banquet table, heavy with candles, silver plate and a round white-frosted cake. It’s a gorgeous cake, and Klaus, between two sobs, pilfers an extra slice for his pillow. Old customs, all that. What? Of course he’s the third bridesmaid. He has the pink boa to show for it.

 

* * *

 

And so they live on, in and out of home. It’s not a normal life, but why be normal when you can be happy? They umbrella a bit, when Diego feels the old fever to serve and protect, and then they stop for a break and take a turn in the flourishing family business. They (Klaus) make posies, and (Ben) help Luther chit-chat with a world that once idolized Spaceboy before it forgot all about him. And when Five pops back from a mission and keels over into the sunflowers, they (Diego) hoist the family whizz-kid up and over one shoulder, shrugging the other philosophically at the customers.

Ben learns to be an audible voice in the family bickers, which certainly “inspirit him” (Klaus) to stay. It’s not even that hard, after some fumbling and Diego’s crash course on the latest leather fashion, during which they thoughtfully gag Klaus with a sock. He makes a moderate use of the tentacles, mostly for the job, but not only. In bed, they’ve proved quite the gent-acles (Klaus, again). But that, as Mr Kipling would say, is another story.

They live and love, and learn (more or less), and are happy to lollygag when the day is done and saved. It is what they’re doing, one evening in August, when Klaus hears a dry little cough at his shoulder. He doesn’t have to turn his head, cushioned on Diego’s thigh, to ID it. He knows the cough. It used to precede all his punishments, in name or deed.

“Hiya, papa,” he says quietly.

He can feel Diego’s thigh still, before Diego’s hand descends on his shoulder, eagle-quick, a protective grip. Klaus glances up; smiles into the dark eyes, and shakes his head. Then turns it.

“You certainly took your own sweet time,” Sir Reginald Hargreeves says.

“Ah, but look at what we’ve accomplished.” Klaus pauses. In the absence of a rejoinder, he adds, “That’s your cue for ‘I love what y’all did with the antichamber', Dad.”

“I meant _you,_ ” Sir Reginald says. Patience was never his strong suit and now that he is properly, literally shady, it seems to have deserted him entirely. “I have no use for the others presently.”

“Oh, trust me, the feeling is mutual. Baby, where’s Lu?”

“Attending Vanya and Allison’s rehearsal.” Their sisters have finally decided to split the Broadway apple and go for a song-and-dance - that is, mime-and-play - number. It’s a new page and a far less glossy one for Allison, but it fits their renewed sisterhood and Allison’s craving for some family downtime.

“Five?”

“Minding Claire.” Ben’s voice rises from where he was slumped against Diego’s shoulder. “Something something quantum ‘smores. It’s okay, though. The cat’s with them.”

“Oh, then…” Klaus waves obligingly in Sir Reginald’s direction. “We have a cat. Or do we? He certainly seems to have us -  wound around his little paw, bless him. What else? Oh yes. Ben. That’s Ben here, drooling on Diego’s neck. He can salivate now.”

“...Dad?” Ben asks, uncertain. He has a quick-gestured move as if to lean into Diego, but chooses instead to sit straight. Diego still wraps his arm around him, while tightening his hold on Klaus’s shoulder. “Can you see him?”

“Yeah, no, he can’t see you,” Klaus tells his father. “Never will again, praise the Lord. Er, the Young Lady.”

“He can’t? Marvellous,” Sir Reginald says, beaming with unReggielike approval. “What did I tell you, Number Four? Eh? What did I say about time and effort? But you did it! You resurrected him!”

“I co-stopped the Apocalypse, too. If we’re handing out bouquets. Speaking of, did you like what we did with the -”

“Will you stop that eternal prattling? Now, boy! To the point.” When Klaus gives him a studied blank look, the ghost bangs his cane to the floor. The sound it makes is hollow, nothing like the horrorshow Klaus expected. Huh. “What are you waiting for? Make me alive!”

“Ah, yes. That little thing.” Klaus angles his head pensively, rubbing his cheek to Diego’s thigh. “Nah, think I’ll pass. See, the world is saved and I’m booked for a bout of fornication with these two.”

“You fool - you utter decadent -  can you even guess how many planets, how many timelines need you? Don’t you have _any_ idea why I raised _any_ of you, Number Four? We have great things to do! We have great worlds to save! Mine, first, mine - my life’s goal, and I won’t let your short-sightedness ruin it!  Resurrect me at _once,_ and I may forego castigation on your -”

Klaus’s mind has been clean for a year now. Which may explain why it takes Sir Reginald by the scruff of its neck, easy does it, and tosses him back into the shadows with a vigour worthy of Klaus’s fire-extinguisher throwing days.

“Beddy-bye, Daddy!” Klaus calls after Limbo.

“He’s gone?” Diego asks, his query slotting neatly into Ben’s “What did he want?”

“Just to say hi. And give us his blessing.” Klaus’s stare defies the shadows. But they only send back a promise of shelter, freshness for the plants, rest for the fighters. “Bed, brothers mine? It’s been a long day’s night.”

“I love you,” Diego blurts out. It’s a non sequitur, but Diego has always been good at tracking down the unspoken in any of his brothers and matching it with his own. Their braveries, too, when required. “I do, I... I... both of you.”

“I never gave you the benefit of doubt,” Ben says softly.  

Klaus links his hands to theirs, one on each side, and walks them to the door, past the benevolent shades, straight on to where tomorrow is waiting.


End file.
